Over the last decade, rail corporations have been running more lengthy freight trains partly to save fuel and labor costs. As they do, they are blocking rural and urban intersections, stoking anger and contributing to tragedies.
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"Should there be a derailment . . . we would be dead ducks, having no evacuating route," Pete Glover, the man whom the street is named after, wrote in a 1992 letter to the railway company. "If some home caught afire," he added. there'd be "no way for firetrucks to serve them." It is happening across the country. In Tennessee, a man died of a medical emergency after an ambulance crew was held up at a train crossing. In Oklahoma, a man perished from a heart attack after first responders were stuck behind a train at the only entrance to their street.
"I fairly believe that this cost a child's life, that they weren't able to get there on time," she said. "It's heartbreaking. It could have been avoided."In his 25 years as a locomotive engineer, Eddie Hall saw his trains grow longer and longer. He can recall when they were just over a mile in length. Before going on leave last winter, he was driving a 3-mile long Union Pacific train with as much 18,000 tons of mixed freight on his regular Tucson to El Paso route.
It has paid off. BNSF Railway and Union Pacific, the two largest railroad corporations in the nation, have reported record earnings in recent years. U.S. railroads have paid out $196 billion on stock buybacks and dividends to shareholders since 2010. Union Pacific CEO Lance Fritz said in an earnings call last month that accident data doesn't show that long trains are riskier. He said that since 2019, train length is up by about 20 percent in his railroad's network, while mainline and siding derailments are down by 26 percent.Labor unions, however, say longer trains tend to require more maintenance because greater stress is placed on the equipment, and they cause greater conflicts in communities.
In 2021, a train blocked a firetruck on its way to a house fire on Glover Road, said Corky Cochran, chief of the Livingston Volunteer Fire Department, which includes Leggett in its territory. Fortunately, another truck had already made it to the scene and they didn't need more water. Good luck, said Cochran, "or the fact that God has been on our side."
Trains block the Glover Road crossing several times a day, and are unpredictable in their timing and duration, residents say. Trains on the main single track pull to a siding track so one coming in the opposite direction can go through. That was the cause of the obstruction that prevented paramedics from quickly reaching baby K'Twon, Union Pacific said in a statement.
Joyce Davis, 76, who has lived in the community her whole life, said she has friends who are hesitant to visit, fearing they will get stuck by a blocked train. She hears it so often, she said, it has become a running joke.Like many of her neighbors, Franklin had repeatedly called Union Pacific to report trains blocking Glover Road, the only way in and out of the trailer where she lived at the time with her two daughters, her then-partner and K'Twon.
The operator instructed her to continue until help could arrive. But when paramedics found their path blocked by a train, they were forced to crawl under the train cars, according to a Polk County Sheriff police report, and Franklin grew increasingly desperate. "I can't live close to a train track," she said, adding that even the sound of a train horn haunts her.As public concern mounts over derailments and blocked crossings, state and federal leaders in both parties are calling for tougher regulation of railway companies.
On the state level, at least five legislatures - in Arizona, Iowa, Missouri, Virginia and Kansas - were reviewing bills this year to restrict train lengths. Most are looking at restricting the length of the train to 1.6 miles. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court invited the federal government to offer its position on whether state and local governments can regulate how long trains can block railroad crossings. It could be at least fall before the nation's highest court decides to take the case.
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